Harrison County authorities have accused a New Albany woman of hatching a scheme for her boyfriend to kill her husband at the couple's home on Memorial Day.

Melissa Barger, a 38-year-old waitress at Waffle House in New Albany, was taken into custody at the restaurant on May 23 and pleaded not guilty to felony conspiracy to commit murder. She is being held in the Harrison County jail in Corydon on a $50,000 full cash bond.

Barger's boyfriend, Matthew Pavlisin, 26, of Louisville's Portland neighborhood, is being held on felony burglary, theft, and other charges in what police say was a break-in designed to get a handgun.

The scheme is bizarre, and more unusual facts will come out as the case advances, Harrison County Prosecutor Otto Schalk said Thursday.

Barger's lawyer, Justin Mills of Marengo, saidthere are "facts in dispute" and that her clients side of the story ultimately will be told.

Police opened an investigation after arresting Pavlisin May 7 on an outstanding warrant from Putnam County. He admitted that he and Barger had agreed to murder her husband, Lee Allen Barger, and for Pavlisin to round up a weapon in a house burglary, according to court records.

He confessed during police interviews that he broke into a home at 10617 Walkens Lane near Elizabeth and stole rifles, but no handgun. So he hid the weapons near the house, intending to retrieve them later to sell or trade for a pistol.

Matthew Pavlisin(Photo: Police photo)

Pavlisin told police that "while he originally had no problems with killing" Barger's husband, a mechanic at a Georgetown service station, he decided to cooperate with police out of concern for the trauma Barger's children would suffer losing their father, records showed.

On three occasions, May 21, 22 and 23, the pair met twice at the McDonald's in Corydon and at the nearby Walmart. An undercover Indiana State Police investigator wired Pavlisin with a recording device and drove him to each meeting, while Harrison investigators conducted surveillance, records showed.

The plan for Memorial Day: She'd take the children out for a picnic and leave a door or window unlocked so Pavlisin could enter the house and shoot Lee Barger, making it look like a burglary gone bad. At one point, as the pair discussed the impact on her kids, Barger was heard saying: "I'm sure they'll cry for a minute or two, anybody's going to," records showed.

When Pavlisin asked if she really wanted the husband "dead and gone," Barger replied that she didn't think divorce would work and that killing her husband was the only way she was going to escape the marriage. She also was heard telling Pavlisin that she expected to receive insurance money and a home in Palmyra, an affidavit said.

Barger is due to appear at a pre-trial hearing in Harrison Superior Court on July 23. A trial has been scheduled for Aug. 26.

For his part, Lee Barger was dumbfounded to learn his wife had been arrested for conspiring to commit murder. When he asked a corrections officer at the jail who she planned to kill, the officer said: "You," his lawyer Larry Wilder, said in an email.

The couple, with three children, had been married 22 years and nothing appeared amiss. "The scary thing is that there wasn't a life insurance policy and they don't own their home. (So it) seems she was willing to say anything to get someone to kill Lee... it's just perplexing what would drive her to this extreme," Wilder said.

Lee Barger filed for divorce last week in Floyd County.

Reporter Grace Schneider can be reached at 812-949-4040. Follow her on Twitter @gesinfk.